With the advent of terrorist attacks on the United States, it is ever more apparent that there is a need for increased security in our everyday lives. One such threatened attack is through the use of biohazardous material which often can take the form of bio-engineered or existing contagious diseases. An example of one such dangerous disease is smallpox. While smallpox has essentially been eradicated in North America and well-developed areas of the world, it still poses a threat to those who have not been immunized from it. Similarly, other diseases, such as the Ebola virus, are extremely contagious and dangerous to large populations as well.
In the past year, the illness known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has made apparent the vulnerability of large populations to a contagious disease. Furthermore, this illness has demonstrated that people in afflicted areas will flee the infected area to escape the disease without knowing whether they are a carrier of the disease. It was observed that people in quarantined areas would attempt to flee those areas without regard to the effect that their condition would have on others that they came into contact with outside the quarantined area. Therefore, this has clearly demonstrated that people are willing to break the law or lie so as to escape a biohazardous site.
Similarly, there are those people who will put their own health at risk to enter a biohazardous site—either to retrieve possessions or contact loved ones. It is common to see people cross police barricades when trying to return to homes that have been evacuated for natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes. Undoubtedly, the same mentality would prevail for some people if a biohazardous situation were to develop, preventing people from returning to their homes or loved ones.
Therefore, there is a need for a system which can be used to help establish that an individual is immunized to a particular threat. Furthermore, a verification system is desired that will help prevent an individual from forging his or her immunization to a particular threat. Similarly, there is a need for a system to establish that someone has been immunized to a particular threat so as to allow them to enter or exit to a currently quarantined area.